‘This country needs to stop sending mixed signals to criminals’

Prime Minister Andrew Holness says criminals are terrorists and should be treated as such, emphasising that existing laws should be amended so that stiffer penalties can be imposed on those found to be guilty of committing such heinous acts.

The prime minister’s statement follows Monday’s triple murder in St James, which claimed the lives of two nine-year-old students of the Chetwood Primary School.

“I think this country needs to stop sending mixed signals to criminals. They are not going to return any grace you give them, they are not reasonable people, they are terrorists and should be treated as such. What occurred was an act of terror. What is terror? It’s a well-defined concept in law. It is clearly the intent to send a chilling signal, no matter where you are, who you are, or whether you are in public or whether innocent people are around they are going to kill you and they will use any means to do it. They don’t respect your human right, they don’t respect your dignity,” the prime minister said.

He was speaking during a post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House on Wednesday, November 8.

The two male students were on their way home from school in a taxi along the Flower Hill main road in Salt Spring, St James, on Monday, November 6, when the vehicle was shot up by gunmen.

The prime minister says his administration will respond to criminals by using the law with blunt force.

“Today, we are going to respond. Not with vengeance, not with the dispensing of our dignity as a people to maintain our laws and to show the criminals that we don’t act like criminals, but to use the law with blunt force on them,” he said.

A part of this, he said, is to enact stiffer penalties for acts of criminality.